Cops and prosecutors love the cash, but is it a racket?

County Sheriff Paul Babeu, one of the defendants in a federal complaint on asset seizure.(Photo: Jack Kurtz, The Arizona Republic)

The wording in the complaint filed in federal court is blunt.

"This racket has to stop," write attorneys from the ACLU, the ACLU of Arizona, and the firm of Perkins Coie. They aim to shut down a statewide operation that each year confiscates millions of dollars worth of property from Arizona residents and keeps the money for itself.

"We expect a fight," said attorney Jean-Jacques "J" Cabou. "There is a lot at stake here for very powerful people."

That's especially true knowing that the people running this so-called "racket" are prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.

The complaint claims that Arizona's civil asset forfeiture laws violate the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments and should be declared unconstitutional.

That would be a good thing.

The law needs to be rewritten.

Going after the assets of bad guys is a worthy goal for prosecutors and cops. The problem in Arizona is that our law allows those agencies to keep the money. Which gives those agencies what the plaintiffs in the case call "an unconstitutional incentive."

In other words, the more of these cases they pursue the more money have to use for their agencies.

The plaintiff in this particular case is a woman named Rhonda Cox, whose pick-up truck was seized after Pinal County Sheriff's deputies arrested her son for allegedly replacing the truck's hood and cover with stolen parts.

Her lawyers argue that "even though Rhonda was an innocent owner, she was denied the return of her truck."

The lawsuit names as defendants the Pinal County attorney and sheriff.

There are many people like Rhonda in Arizona. They're not drug lords or mob bosses. They have a tough time challenging the agencies that seize their possessions. First, because they don't have the money. Second, because the law threatens them with having to pay the state's attorney fees should they lose the case.

"The original purposes of these laws was to attack large scale narcotics trafficking and other large scale high-dollar racketeering activity," Cabou said. "What we now see is that a huge number of seizures are of a low dollar amount. And those people can't fight back. And in the aggregate it is a lot of money."

Prosecutors and police agencies have come to rely on forfeiture money

That's a very dicey situation.

Particularly when the agencies involved get to keep the money and, as the lawsuit claims, use it to pay for "everything from traditional law enforcement equipment to office supplies, furniture, office refreshments, and even toilets."

Also handing out monetary gifts to local organizations. And even funneling funds into a foundation that is meant to assist law enforcement.

"I don't disagree with targeting the economic gains of criminal enterprises," Cabou said. "But there is something wrong with having a law enforcement agency unilaterally appropriating a huge amount of money. Those are choices to be made by legislative policy makers."

There is also something wrong with policy makers too weak in the knees to assert their authority. A decision now left to the courts.